In a variety of image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic copying machine, generally, an image of a document is read by moving a lighting lamp etc. having image reading means relatively to the document while the document is placed on a document glass stand in the fixed or moved condition, and then an electrostatic latent image corresponding to the document image is formed on an image carrier to perform a development, and the obtained toner image is transferred to recording paper to form the image.
In such image forming apparatus, a roll made of long recording paper wound in a cylindrical shape may be adopted as the recording paper. The wound recording paper is pulled from the roll in synchronization with an image forming process and the pulled recording paper is fed to a transfer part by a rolled paper feeding mechanism and is fed outside after the transfer. The recording paper pulled from the roll is cut in a predetermined length by cutting means such as a cutter. That is, the rolled paper feeding mechanism and cutting means are controlled so as to operate at a predetermined timing by a control part of feeding the rolled paper, thus, the recording paper pulled from the roll can be cut in a required size to use in the cut size.
Then, when the recording paper of the roll has run out during the image forming process, a sensor for detecting the absence or presence of paper located in the proximity of a paper pullout part of the roll detects the last rear end of the recording paper, and the control part of feeding the rolled paper receives a "paper absence signal" emitted from the detecting sensor, thereby, a stop control of the image forming process is performed.
However, in such the conventional apparatus, when the recording paper of the roll has run out, the recording paper cut finally remains at the narrow portion of the feed path, with the result that a takeout operation of the remaining paper may become difficult. That is, if a feeding operation of the recording paper is stopped immediately when the recording paper of the roll has run out, a piece of the remaining recording paper may stop in a difficult state to take out that the piece has been nipped in a nip portion of rollers and the like, for example. Also, when the remaining piece is fed to the outside of the apparatus, the length of the remaining piece may become too short to feed and in this case, the piece of the remaining recording paper cannot be fed to an outlet, thus, the remaining piece may have stayed with its piece nipped in a portion difficult to take out.
Accordingly, to overcome the above problem, it is the first object of the present invention to provide a rolled paper supply device for an image forming apparatuses in which a piece of the remaining recording paper left finally may be handled with the remaining piece always taken out easily when the recording paper of a roll has run out during an image forming process.
Also, in the conventional apparatus mentioned above, when a document has become jammed during the image forming process or the process has become stopped on the way by the fact that an operator pushes a halt key of an image forming operation and so on, by an operation control of the above control part of feeding the rolled paper, the recording paper is pulled from the roll until the pulled paper reaches a size required at the start of the image forming process and then the paper is cut. Then, the recording paper cut in the required size is fed out to handle in the same manner as normal cut paper.
However, in such the conventional apparatus, although the image forming process has become stopped on the way and thereby the image has not become formed, the recording paper is further pulled from the roll until the pulled paper reaches the required size, with the result that the recording paper is wasted by the further pulled paper and also the image forming efficiency is reduced.
Accordingly, it is the second object of the present invention to provide a rolled paper supply device for an image forming apparatus in which a recording paper pulled from a roll may be fed out to handle without waste when a stop has been required during an image forming process.